| dc.description.abstract | The world today has some very advanced lCT services and high quality life indicators. The
existing online e-Iearning environments have been designed with this in mind, and are
therefore reliant on reliable means of communication for their access. However, access to
Internet which facilitates access to these online e-Iearning environments is not universal, and
poses a significant cost to the user. The lack of access to online educational resources whether
for economical or logistics reasons excludes otherwise eligible students from the course. This is
a significant issue in rural and lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. On the other hand,
occasional loss of connectivity, bandwidth provider problems or the need to take down parts of
the network for maintenance still renders asynchronous communication dependant e-Iearning
system inaccessible at times. This calls for new methods and technology to supplement
traditional online based training and instruction and provide continuous learning even when
offline.
This research project present an Asynchronous Distributed e-Iearning Environment model that
overcomes the challenges faced in the usage and implementation of synchronous
communication dependant e-Iearning platforms. The learning environment proposed in this
research overcomes the infrastructural challenges of access to online learning environment by
providing an alternative mechanism that allows learning to continue even with minimal or
unreliable communication infrastructure, thereby overcoming the infrastructural access barrier
posed by the convectional e-Iearning environment. The system is modeled in conformity with
the existing e-Iearning systems that are driven by network connectivity, having most of the
features that are characteristic of todav's e-Iearning platform. | en |
